Denis Kennelly

Making changes in a Storage Area Network (SAN) is a daily chore for many enterprise IT administrators, but so is the risk of prolonged downtime associated with configuration errors or incompatibilities in hardware or software. A popular refrain heard from industry analysts and IT consultants is that the number one cause of downtime in the data center is due to change management errors. The thinking is that undisciplined IT changes often cause problems that result in downtime. And with the size and complexity of SANs growing - especially as enterprises deploy heterogeneous environments - the downtime risks loom even larger. Unfortunately, too many IT administrators still employ the "plug and pray" method. That is, they go blindly into implementing SAN changes in a production environment and "pray" everything will work when it goes back online. If things go awry, the... (more)